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Community Sustainable Scientific Metadata Standards Directory

Kate Alderete

Bio:

Kate is a Master's Candidate at the University of Denver in the field of Library and Information Science. She studied English Literature at the University of Prince Edward Island in PEI, Canada. She originally hails from the Land of Enchantment and enjoys hiking in the Rocky Mountains and the sights and sounds of the Mile High City!

Project Description:

The Research Data Alliance (RDA) Metadata Standards Directory Working Group (MSDWG) is developing a prototype wiki-based directory to list metadata standards applicable to scientific data. The initial emphasis is on widely-used and domain community-endorsed metadata standards and schemas with significant interoperation/re-use capability. The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) has compiled a catalog of Disciplinary Metadata Standards, use cases for these standards, as well as tools to implement the standards. This catalog can be found on the DCC Disciplinary Metadata page at (http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/metadata-standards). The RDA MSDWG has joined with the DCC to extend this catalog of disciplinary metadata. The MDSWG has circulated a survey requesting additional information about metadata standards; the tools and use cases associated with them, and additional information that shows where and how scientists use them worldwide. The goal of this summer project is continue work on a prototype system that would allow respondents to the survey to directly fill out a template, similar to a wiki, that standardizes the presentation of information and eliminates the need to transfer information from the survey. The prototype system will also enable updates and corrections to the catalog of disciplinary metadata. The long-term goal of the MSDWG is a community sustainable directory of metadata standards. The goals of this summer project are to continue work on a prototype catalog system that: (1) is wiki based, supporting community participation, (2) standardizes the presentation of information about metadata standards, tools, and use cases, (3) enables catalog contributions, updates, and corrections by directly filling out a template, (4) conduct a survey, building off of the fall 2013 survey, to: (a) gather new information and updates about metadata standards, tools, and uses cases (b) test the functionality of the prototype catalog.
The long-term goal of the MSDWG is a community sustainable directory of metadata standards.

DataONE is a collaboration among many partner organizations, and is funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) under a Cooperative Agreement. Acknowledgement: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers 0830944 and 1430508. Disclaimer: Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.